1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control apparatus, a printing control method, and a computer program therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In producing a photo book by bookbinding printing, to prevent an operation failure or mistake by an operator, a print job group is formed for each part constituting a photo book, such as the body, the cover, the dust jacket, or the wrapper band, and the printing of the job group is executed by one operation in a specific order. Accordingly, an operator of a printing factory executes bookbinding processing in producing a book product based on printed parts, which are combined in order of printing (for example, in order of the photo books).
More specifically, in the bookbinding processing, the operator extracts the parts constituting each ordered photo book, which is generated based on each printed part, and combines the parts together.
In addition, in executing bookbinding printing of a photo book, various types of paper, which are instructed according to the desire of use of a customer, are used because the printing is executed according to an order from an individual user (customer). Furthermore, in the bookbinding printing like this, the customer may order a print product of various types of finishing by using different types of paper (the color, the thickness, the material, etc.) set for each part even if the same data is input and if the data is to be output in the same format.
Under such circumstances, in generating a plurality of photo books, if very many types of printing paper (sheet) are to be used and if print paper of the type that has not been set to a paper feed cassette of a printing apparatus, it becomes necessary for the operator to replace the print paper.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-152822 discusses a method for controlling the printing order (sequence) of print jobs to reduce the operations for replacing the printing paper to be used in a plurality of print jobs using different types of printing paper. In the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-152822, the type of paper to be used in printing of an input print job is determined and the input print job is classified into a print job group for which the printing paper of the determined type is used.
However, in the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-152822, the order of processing a print job that has been registered with a specific job group is determined without considering the order of processing of another print job that has been registered with another job group. In other words, in the conventional method, bookbinding processing for producing a print product that has been printed based on each job group, such as parts of a photo book, is not considered.
If a print job is executed in order of processing determined without considering the bookbinding processing, a plurality of parts constituting a book product may not be processed in an appropriate order within a resulting printed sheet bundle. Accordingly, it may become necessary for the operator to search the printing paper bundle of each part for a necessary part in extracting the part necessary for producing a book product from the printing paper bundle for each part after printing. Therefore, the operation efficiency may degrade.